By Juan Montoya
The web of incredulity surrounding the three Las Vegas bound court bailiffs has just gotten even more unbelievable.
On Tuesday, 38th District Court bailiff Joel Garcia, County Court-At-Law #3's bailiff Leofredo Peña, and 103rd District Court bailiff Jose C. Garza got a conditional approval to travel to Las Vegas to receive what they called "mandatory legislative training" on court room security.A grudging court approved their travel with only Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño voting against saying he didn't want to "open the floodgates" for other county employees having county taxpayers pay for their travel and hotel accommodations in the gambling mecca.
"I don't want to 'send the wrong message' to county taxpayers by sending county workers to Las Vegas," Treviño said.
Pct. 3 commissioner David Garza made the motion to approve the funding of the trip as long as they could prove that they would be used for training hours
credit.
Well, now it has come to light that the courses that are offered by the firm Legal Liability and Risk Management Institute on October 21-24 when the three bailiffs will attend not only do not deal with court security, but are not "mandated legislatively" for court bailiffs.
As a result, neither training supervisor Pct. 2 Constable Abel Gomez or the training officer with the Cameron County Sheriff's Dept. say they cannot be submitted for training credit with the Texas Commission on Law enforcement.
"Those courses are not mandatory," Gomez said. "I can't submit them for training credit for them because they won't get it."
Originally, the training was touted as"active shooter" training by Cameron County Asst. D.A. ,Rene Garza, who then deferred to bailiff Garcia who told the commissioners they had not been "invited" to attend court security training by Gomez who held it recently at Texas Southmost College at a $30 fee.
"We are treated like the red-haired stepson," Garcia complained to the commissioners.
But a review of the training offered from October 21-24 have nothing to do with court security at all. Below is the itinerary listed on LLRMI's training courses in Las Vegas those three days.
The courses offered in Las Vegas by LLRMI during the time the three bailiffs will be there do not deal with court security and instead deal with homicide in investigation, law enforcement supervision, internal affairs, and loss control.
None of those courses, Gomez, confirmed, are mandatory for court bailiffs and they can't be submitted for training credits in Texas.
"They might be made to reimburse the county for the cost of going and staying in Las Vegas," he said.
So if there are no court security courses during that time, and the courses that are being offered are not mandatory and cannot be used as training credits for court bailiffs, why should county taxpayers foot the bill to give these three employees a nice vacation at their expense after having had their property taxes raised by the county?
Is this what the property tax increase was for?